The militarisation of the Platfontein San (!Xun and Khwe): The initial years 1966–1974 AS VAN WYK1 Abstract The resettlement of 372 San (Bushmen) soldiers with dependents from 31/201 and 203 Battalions in Namibia to Schmidtsdrift in the Northern Cape during March 1990 was the last chapter in the process of militarisation of the !Xun and Khwe communities. However, there is a popular perception that the South African Defence Force (SADF) was primarily responsible for the militarisation of this particular San community, with the founding of 31 Battalion during 1974. This ignores the fact that the !Xun and Khwe originated in Angola, where they were actively involved with the Portuguese security forces. With one exception, only superficial mention is made in the literature about the role of the San soldiers in Angola before independence in November 1975. This article shows that the militarisation of the San actually started in 1966, when members of the !Xun were recruited by the Portuguese Security Police (PIDE) and successfully used against the Angolan liberation movements MPLA, FNLA and UNITA. The lifestyle of the San before the PIDE era is discussed, as is the period in which they were raised to a superior status as flecha fighters. This period of military prowess ended with the independence of Angola and resulted in the !Xun and Khwe seeking refuge with the SADF. These geo-political events led to the founding of 31 Battalion, situated in the Western Caprivi, where former flecha soldiers were retrained and incorporated into SADF structures. In closing, brief mention is made of the resettlement of the !Xun and Khwe to Schmidtsdrift in South Africa. Keywords: !Xun, Khwe, San, Platfontein, Border War, Namibia, Angola, Portuguese, Caprivi, South African Defence Force (SADF), 31 Batallion. Introduction “The San of Platfontein” is the collective name for the !Xun2 and Khwe3 Bushman communities4 currently residing in a settlement on the farm Platfontein, approximately 10 kilometres north-west of Kimberley. The community of about 5 500, now living a precarious life in the Northern Cape, is the remainder of 31 Battalion, which was disbanded on 7 March 1993 with the final laying up of the unit colours. The unit colours and other military 1 Lt. Col. (Ret.) Scholtz van Wyk is an MA candidate in History at Stellenbosch University. Email: [email protected] 2 !Xun: Angola !Khu (Kung), also referred to as "Vasekela" and part of larger "Bushman 2 !Xun: Angola !Khu (Kung), also referred to as "Vasekela" and part of larger "Bushman proper" (!Khu-San) group. 3 Khwe: Also referred to as Khoe, Kwe or "Mbarakwengo" and part of Nama-speaking groups, from West Caprivi and Kavango districts, also extreme south-eastern Angola. 4 The terms “Bushman”, originally “Bosjesman” (Dutch for “the man from the bush”, capturing the idea of elusiveness) and “San”, which derived from the KhoeKhoegowab term Sa, meaning “to gather”, are both used in documents and literature to refer to the !Xun and Khwe collectively. For the purposes of this article the term “San” will suffice. TD The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 10(3) December 2014, pp. 133-151. Van Wyk memorabilia of the battalion form part of an exhibition at the McGregor Museum at Wildebeestkuil and depict the history of these two communities over the last 50 years. The relocation of 372 !Xun and Khwe soldiers and their dependants, a total of 3 919 people, during March 1990 from Omega in the Western Caprivi (the Zambezi region of Namibia) and Mangetti Dune in Bushmanland, Namibia, to Schmidtsdrift in the Republic of South Africa at an estimated cost of R3 165 500, was the last chapter in the militarisation of the Platfontein San – a process during which they were subjected to several forms of militarisation over a period of about 16 years.5 These soldiers were part of 31/201 Battalion at Omega and 203 Battalion in Bushmanland which served actively in counter-insurgency operations (coinops) during the border war. This war between the South African Defence Force (SADF), in alliance with the South-West Africa Territory Force (SWATF), and the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the active military wing of SWAPO,6 stretched over a long period, from 1966 to 1989. It mainly took place in the vicinity of the border between Namibia and Angola. About half of the San soldiers of both battalions, together with their dependants, chose voluntarily to remain in Namibia after intense negotiations between the San, the South African government and delegations of the designated SWAPO government, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)7 and the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG), who all tried to convince the San not to relocate to South Africa.8 The exodus by the San of Platfontein from Namibia to South Africa was their second major move. The !Xun and Khwe originated in the south-east of Angola and then fled to the Kavango and Caprivi regions of Namibia during 1974–1975, where they were initially merged as Project Alpha (later known as 31 Battalion) under the leadership of Cmdt. Delville Linford.9 Although existing sources refer incidentally to the previous military involvement of the San in Portuguese-controlled Angola, the popular perception is that the SADF started the process of the militarisation10 of the !Xun and Khwe in 1974.11 Cann makes a valuable contribution in 5 South African National Defence Force (SANDF) Documentation Centre 31 Battalion Archives Group C Army / D Ops / 509 / 1, Report Op Mattress Relocation of the Bushmen at Schmidtsdrift, 27 March 1990, p. 3. 6 The South West African People’s Organisation, established in 1959 and main organiser of resistance against occupation by South Africa. L Scholtz, The SADF in the Border War 1966– 1989 (Tafelberg, Cape Town, 2013) p. 3. 7 The OAU was the predecessor of the African Union, which was established on 26 May 2001. 8 The author and his colleague from Omega, Cmdt. Callie Sanders, personally led a San deputation to Mr Sam Nujoma in Windhoek on 7 February 1990, where the President-Elect gave them the assurance that the San were welcome in Namibia and that they would enjoy the same rights as the other groups. S van Wyk, Commanding Officer’s Diary (unpublished, 7 February 1990) p. 4. 9 D Linford (founder of 31 Battalion), My Bushmen Experience, unpublished manuscript in the author’s possession. 10 Khwe: Also referred to as Khoe, Kwe or "Mbarakwengo" and part of Nama-speaking groups, from West Caprivi and Kavango districts, also extreme south-eastern Angola. 134 Militarisation of the Platfontein San his study The Flechas, in which he describes how the Angolan San were involved in the Portuguese anti-revolutionary warfare, but it is written mainly from a Portuguese perspective and does not fully establish the relations between the San of 31 Battalion and what happened in Angola.12 This article will show that the militarisation of the San of Platfontein started as early as 1966, when elements of the !Xun, at that stage residing in the Cuando Cubango province in the vicinity of Serpa Pinto (Menongue) in Angola, were recruited by PIDE13 (the Portuguese International Police for Defence of the State) and utilised with great success in counter-insurgency against the Angolan freedom movements, the MPLA, FNLA and UNITA.14 The article initially focuses on the !Xun and Khwe prior to the PIDE era. This context is important in understanding the San’s willingness to co-operate in the process of their militarisation at a later stage. This is followed by an indication of how the San were militarised during the PIDE era, involving their “loss of innocence”, their compelled flight from Angola after the country became independent in 1975, and the incorporation of the San by the SADF as Project Alpha. The continuation and extension of the process of militarisation in South-West Africa/Namibia is illustrated briefly and the article ends with a discussion of the relocation of the San in South Africa. Life before boots, steel and Salazar15 In the 1960s Angola was a thinly-populated country, with a total population of a little under 5 million, consisting of 95,3% black, 3,6% white and 1,1% mestiço or coloured people.16 According to a census conducted under difficult conditions during warfare in 1970, the population density was 4,53 people per square kilometre. This figure, however, does not reflect the uneven distribution of people in Angola, as only 16% of the population inhabited about 52% of the country, which is geographically sprawling and difficult terrain.17 This massive stretch of country, referred to by Henrique Galvão as “the lands at the end of the earth”, is situated in the south-east of Angola and includes the provinces of Moxico and Cuando Cubango.18 In sharp contrast, the rest of the population inhabited the central plateau and the provinces of Huíla, Huambo, Malanje and Bié and the coastal provinces of Luanda, Benguela, Moçamedes and urban centres. 11 S du Preez, Avontuur in Angola (Van Schaik, Pretoria, 1989); R Lee & S Hurlich, From Foragers to Fighters. SA’s militarisation of the Namibian San (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982); I Uys, Bushman Soldiers, Their Alpha and Omega (Fortress Publications, Germiston, 1993); RJ Gordon and SS Douglas, The Bushman Myth (Westview Press, Oxford, 2000); D Robbins, On The Bridge of Goodbye (Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg, 2007); Soldier of Fortune, SADF’s Bushman Battalion, March 1984. 12 JP Cann, The Flechas – Insurgent Hunting in Eastern Angola, 1965–1974 (Helion & Co., England, 2013). 13 WS van der Waals, Portugal’s War in Angola (Protea Book House, Pretoria, 2011), p.